Inheritance 

 Insect-life 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



342 



selves by their unnatural, one-sided educa- 

 tion, and by their artificial separation from 

 the rest of mankind. By this means many 

 dark sides of human nature are specially 

 developed and, as it were, artificially bred, 

 and according to the laws of transmission 

 by inheritance are propagated through series 

 of generations with ever-increasing force and 

 dominance. HAECKEL History of Creation, 

 vol. i, ch. 8, p. 186. (K. P. & Co., 1899.) 



1676, INHERITANCE THE RULE 



Non-inheritance the Anomaly. If strange 

 and rare deviations of structure are really 

 inherited, less strange and commoner devia- 

 tions may be freely admitted to be inherit- 

 able. Perhaps the correct way of viewing 

 the whole subject would be to look on the 

 inheritance of every character whatever as 

 the rule, and non-inheritance as the anom- 

 aly. [See also HEREDITY.] DARWIN Origin 

 of Species, ch. 1, p. 12. (Burt.) 



1677. INHERITANCE THROUGH 

 COUNTLESS GENERATIONS Bobolink of 

 Utah Follows Ancestral Path Southward. 

 Existing conditions [of bird-migration] are 

 the result of changes which have been active 

 for ages. No species, therefore, has acquired 

 its present summer range at one step, but by 

 gradually adding new territory to its breed- 

 ing-ground. For example, certain of our 

 Eastern birds are evidently derived through 

 Mexico, and in returning to their winter 

 quarters in Central America they travel 

 through Texas and Mexico, and are unknown 

 in Florida and the West Indies. Others have 

 come to us through Florida, and in returning 

 to their winter quarters do not pass through 

 either Texas or Mexico. This is best illus- 

 trated by the bobolink, an Eastern bird 

 which, breeding from New Jersey northward 

 to Nova Scotia, has spread westward until 

 it has reached Utah and northern Montana. 

 But and here is the interesting point 

 these birds of the Far West do not follow 

 their neighbors and migrate southward 

 through the Great Basin into Mexico, but, 

 true to their inherited habit, retrace their 

 steps and leave the United States by the 

 roundabout way of Florida, crossing thence 

 to Cuba, Jamaica, and Yucatan, and winter- 

 ing south of the Amazon. The bobolinks of 

 Utah did not learn this route in one genera- 

 tion; they inherited the experience of count- 

 less generations, slowly acquired as the spe- 

 cies extended its range westward, and in re- 

 turning across the continent they give us 

 an excellent illustration of the stability of 

 routes of migration. CHAPMAN Bird-Life, 

 ch. 4, p. 60. (A., 1900.) 



1678. INHUMANITY AMID PERIL 

 AND SUFFERING Robbers Plunder Victims 

 of Earthquake. It is supposed that [in the 

 great Calabrian earthquake, 1783] about a 

 fourth part of the inhabitants of Polistina, 

 and of some other towns, were buried alive, 

 and might have been saved had there been 

 no want of hands; but in so general a ca- 



lamity, where each was occupied with his 

 own misfortunes or those of his family, aid 

 could rarely be obtained. Neither tears nor 

 supplications nor promises of high rewards 

 were listened to. Many acts of self-devotion, 

 prompted by parental and conjugal tender- 

 ness, or by friendship or the gratitude of 

 faithful servants, are recorded; but indi- 

 vidual exertions were, for the most part, in- 

 effectual. It frequently happened that per- 

 sons in search of those most dear to them 

 could hear their moans, could recognize their 

 voices, were certain of the exact spot where 

 they lay buried beneath their feet, yet could 

 afford them no succor. The piled mass re- 

 sisted all their strength and rendered their 

 efforts of no avail. 



At Terranuova four Augustin monks, who 

 had taken refuge in a vaulted sacristy, the 

 arch of which continued to support an im- 

 mense pile of ruins, made their cries heard 

 for the space of four days. One only of 

 the brethren of the whole convent was saved, 

 and " of what avail was his strength to re- 

 move the enormous weight of rubbish which 

 had overwhelmed his companions " ? He 

 heard their voices die away gradually, and 

 when afterwards their four corpses were 

 disinterred they were found clasped in each 

 other's arms. Affecting narratives are pre- 

 served of mothers saved after the fifth, sixth, 

 and even seventh day of their interment, 

 when their infants or children had perished 

 with hunger. 



It might have been imagined that the 

 sight of sufferings such as these would have 

 been sufficient to awaken sentiments of hu- 

 manity and pity in the most savage breasts ; 

 but while some acts of heroism are related, 

 nothing could exceed the general atrocity 

 of conduct displayed by the Calabrian peas- 

 ants; they abandoned the farms and flocked 

 in great numbers into the towns not to res- 

 cue their countrymen from a lingering death, 

 but to plunder. They dashed through the 

 streets, fearless of danger, amid tottering 

 walls and clouds of dust, trampling beneath 

 their feet the bodies of the wounded and 

 half-buried, and often stripping them, while 

 yet living, of their clothes. LYELL Princi- 

 ples of Geology, bk. ii, ch. 28, p. 491. (A., 

 1854.) 



1679. INITIATIVE, DESTRUCTION 

 OF Gutting Off Cerebral Hemispheres of Frog 

 Animal Becomes Automatic Machine. 

 When a frog's cerebral hemispheres alone 

 are cut off by a section between them and 

 the thalami, which preserves the latter, an 

 unpractised observer would not at first sus- 

 pect anything abnormal about the animal. 

 Not only is he capable, on proper instigation, 

 of all the acts already described [of ordinary 

 life], but he guides himself by sight, so that 

 if an obstacle be set up between him and 

 the light, and he be forced to move forward, 

 he either jumps over it or swerves to one 

 side. . . . Thus far, as aforesaid, a per- 

 son unfamiliar with frogs might not suspect 

 a mutilation; but even such a person would 



